But oh, the potential!

We bought our house because 1) we were sick of living in a tiny 2-bedroom duplex with 2 school-age kids & a baby, 2) it was very very affordable and 3) we planned on living here a long time and the house has such potential! It's on about 1/3 acre, one story with a daylight basement, 2 toilets (tho 1 full bathroom) and 3 bedrooms. A nice fit for us. It's in walking distance from the elementary school and High School, if you really want to walk that far - Downtown is closer than that.

The first thing we did when we moved in was paint the interior. The previous owners were apparently losing their vision, so they painted every thing in extremely LOUD colors - greens & pinks and oranges. It hurt my eyes.

Lee's sister, Donna, came up with a nice color scheme for me - I selected the colors I liked best, and she helped me paint the kitchen & laundry room. Much, much better. The bathroom went from being bright lime green to white with green accents, and our bedroom went from bright pink to white with pink trim. The boy's room had been dark beige and pink (???) so we went instead for a yellow & blue that matched a cool wallpaper space thing that Donna had found for them.

Diana's room was very small. It had been used by the previous owner for his ham radio room. I guess he used to have a massive ham antenna in the back of the house or something. Anyway, her room went from dark beige to light blue. Donna had found a lot of nice wallpaper borders & stuff to match up with paint.

All that together raised the value of the house right off the bat. Then we took a break for about 4 years.

Now we've added a master bedroom where our carport used to be. It's very nice and big and exactly what we wanted. Diana's tiny bedroom became a nice, big walk-in closet, and she moved into our old room. She painted all our previously pink trim a nice shiny black (to fit her oriental-theme decor). The new big bedroom has medium blue walls & light blue ceiling, with a nice Pergo floor that looks like real wood. The trim in the room is white.

Since the windows for the new room came with white frames, we went ahead and painted the other window frames in front white as well. It looks much cleaner than the old blue. We still need to paint the other windows on the sides of the house. However, we are in September now, and it's already started raining here & there. I'm focussed more on the new bathroom at this point.

And that's the last thing we've been working on now. If you've looked at Lee's blog at all, you'll know how that's going already. Suffice to say, I'm not much involved in this project other than cleaning up after it a lot. I did put down the tar felt stuff today by myself on the floor. So that's something. I also helped pick out the vanity. I need drawers. I have a blow dryer! And product for my hair!! Lee's dad took the wood from the huge cupboard that shared the room with the toilet, and he's going to make us a linen closet with that. It will go in the laundry room.

Our german exchange student is coming at the end of the month, so there's the timeline! Actually, the sooner we get toilet #2 up & running, the better!!